[——] How, [then,] are offspring born like to their parents? Or how are they returned 1 to [their own] species 2?

[Aphrodite.] I will set forth the reason. When generation stores up seed from the ripe blood being sweated forth, 3 it comes to pass that somehow theres exhaled from the whole mass 4 of limbs a certain essence, following the

law of a divine activity, as though the man himself were being born; the same thing also in the womans case apparently takes place.

When, then, what floweth from the man hath the ascendancy, and keeps intact, the young ones brought to light resembling its sire; contrary wise, in the same way, [resembling] its dam.

Moreover, if there should be ascendancy of any part, [then] the resemblance [of the young] will favour that [especial] part.

But sometimes also for long generations the offspring favoureth the husbands form, because his decan has the greater influence 1 at that [particular] moment when the wife conceives.

COMMENT

This fragment belongs to a type of Hermetic literature of which it is the sole surviving specimen. It is in form identical with the Isis and Horus type; but what the name of the questioner of Aphrodite could have been is difficult to say.

Footnotes

89:1 ἀποδίδοται,—referring, presumably, to the idea of metempsychosis.